At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, they don’t make bands like Sparks any more. The Mael brothers have always been joyously, uncompromisingly weird – and are now in their sixth decade of releasing music that steadfastly refuses to conform to trends or even genre, although you can safely bet that the word “quirky” has been used generously in reviews over the past 51 years.
Most acts would kill for the Californian duo’s longevity, but they haven’t always been celebrated. Thanks to the patronage of the likes of Morrissey and Franz Ferdinand in recent years – and Edgar Wright’s excellent The Sparks Brothers documentary film in 2021 giving them another popularity boost – the septuagenarian musicians are enjoying another wind to their long, sometimes illustrious and indubitably influential career.
Their 26th record (their first on Island Records since their seminal 1974 breakthrough, Kimono My House) arrives sandwiched between their musical film Annette and another forthcoming musical in development, X Crucior, but seems no more or less influenced by the pomp and theatrics required of those projects. As fans will be aware, pomp and theatrics go hand in hand with any Sparks album, which requires a certain degree of suspension of disbelief to fully absorb the Maels’ eccentricities.
This tracklist is as musically haphazard as that of its predecessor, 2021′s A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, from the grimy judder of the title track to the considered western-styled drama of Not That Well-Defined. We Go Dancing’s skewed, oddball approach to pop is a delight; the glitzy strut of When You Leave is a perfect foil for its tongue-in-cheek lyrics about a boring person at a gathering (“They’ll be breaking out the Courvoisier when you leave”), as is the fiendish electronic patter of Love Story, a song about the protagonist sacrificing his place in a queue to go and buy drugs for his girlfriend (“Ain’t my thing, it’s her thing,” Russell Mael protests).
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There are also songs about the Mona Lisa being “uptight” and exasperated, the Hollywood golden-age actor Veronica Lake, the disappointment of modern life and the mundane conundrum of how to spend a sunny day. Just when the absurdity feels a little much, however, songs like It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way anchor the tracklist and bring the listener back to earth, however short-lived that sense of grounding may be.
Perhaps that’s why Sparks are that rare beast that has made it to five decades in the business: they are experienced enough to know there’s a thin line between frivolity and inanity. Once again, they’ve managed to land on the right side of it.
